Go-for-broke Dane Reynolds vs master of style Tom Curren…

The go-for-broke surfer from Bakersfield, California, Dane Reynolds, and Tom Roland Curren, a three-time world surfing champion who was unbeatable for most of his career and who popularised the modern Fish, have been filmed going wave-for-wave at California’s dreamy Rincon Point.

Reynolds, who is forty this year, and Curren, sixty-one, are a study of contrasts.

Reynolds employs a stall, load-up and explode style that includes many experimental and aerial manoeuvres while Tom Curren is cool minimalism, a man who influenced a generation of American surfers including the noted Kelly Slater, himself a world champion surfer of renown.

“On a wave Tom Curren is ageless,” Vaughan Blakey told me a couple of years back when he released the Curren biopic Free Scrubber. “The fact that he’s not looking for big sections to hit is easy on the eye. It’s not all about the hammers. You’re not waiting for him to do something. He’s just riding waves.”

Dane Reynolds, meanwhile, divides his time between the surf around Carpinteria and his small surf shop, which he owns and operates.

Two-and-a-half summers back, Jen See wrote movingly of CH11 and its place in surfing culture.

Let’s go inside.

A round glass table readily at home in your grandparents’ living room stands in the center of the room. It’s an obvious thrift shop find. Piles of stickers sit on the table’s two shelves. As a grom at heart, I took the free stickers, yes.

Surf films run on the video screens, which should not surprise you at all.

A poster hangs on the wall from the premier of “Glad You Scored” at the nearby Majestic Ventura Theater, a battered single-screen movie house. There’s a framed photograph of Reynolds surfing, and a framed movie flyer from Australia. Nothing fancy.

Clothing from Former runs along one wall. The line has subdued colors, which is to say, there’s a lot of black. Reynolds pulls design elements from eclectic sources, and the current collection brings a punk-mod vibe.

Reynolds is also producing clothing under his Chapter 11 TV label, and it occupies the store’s opposite wall. Bright, playful, and mostly hand-drawn, it feels entirely different from Former. The groms seem to like it — smaller sizes were scarce.

In an Instagram story, Reynolds explains one of the designs. While sending a text to filmer Hunter Martinez during the Haleiwa comp, Reynolds told him to “Capture the moment.” At the same time, Reynolds was drawing a shooting star for one of his daughters. It’s now a cute as fuck t-shirt and hoody. I regret not buying one.

One corner holds hats and t-shirts from Trashboy, a creation from Courtney Jaedtke, Reynolds’s wife. It derives from son Sammy’s early obsession with the garbage truck, if I remember correctly. Between them, Jaedtke and Reynolds produce an almost dizzying array of clothing and art. It’s hard to keep up.

Boards and suits remain on the sparser side. A few boards hang from the ceiling with space for more. A stack of cards at the front desk stands ready for custom orders to Channel Islands. The extremely analogue approach fits. A rack holds a dozen or so wetsuits.

An opening in the back wall shows a small workspace with a four-color t-shirt printing press. It’s Saturday afternoon, and Reynolds is back there screening shirts. He looks relaxed and happy, like there are few places he would rather be. He waves a cheerful hello.

Surf today?

Nah, it was flat all the way down the coast. Looked like a swimming pool.

"It was like in a movie. I was completely out of air and I was still swimming to the top. I can't believe I made it."

Ben Gravy is a high-end intermediate surfer from New Jersey whose pivot from drinking to vlogging saved him, he says, from a life as a drunk.

“I drank like a fish,” says a man who now pays his bills promptly and who owns a title-free automobile.

As long-time fans of the novelty wave maestro but wary of falling for his skilful headlines, we were initially sceptical of his latest edit, “Nightmare Wipe Out Scenario 20 Second Hold Down.” 

But, reader, this is better than being manipulated pleasurably by the hand of a woman with tawny-browny hair and plump-thighed legs.

The edit doesn’t mess around.

In the opening scene, Ben Gravy staggers through the beach car park as a camera operator yells,

“Did you almost die out there? I filmed the whole thing! Dude, you had less than a second to catch your breath before that second wave came on top of you!”

Gravy chokes back the tears.

“I’m not kidding. It was black dark and I’m trying to look around. It was like in a movie. All that stuff you hear people talking about. It was dark and I was completely out of  air and I was still swimming to the top. I can’t believe I made it to the top.”

Harrowing, essential, life-changing.

As Gravy writes in the liner notes,

“I broke my rule in Hawaii & I went surfing on the last day of the trip,” writes Gravy. “It was especially gnarly, because it was the first day of the Eddie swell & the surf was rising fast. Waimea Bay was definitely the biggest I’ve ever surfed it & I experienced what is by far the scariest wipe out of my life, accompanied by a 20 second hold down. I’m very happy to be here still living on Earth.”